#Ghoulvember ‘Nightmares-A New Decade Of Modern Horror’ Edited by Ellen Datlow

About the book…

Unlucky thieves invade a house where Home Alone seems like a playground romp. An antique bookseller and a mob enforcer join forces to retrieve the Atlas of Hell. Postapocalyptic survivors cannot decide which is worse: demon women haunting the skies or maddened extremists patrolling the earth.

In this chilling twenty-first-century companion to the cult classic Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror, Ellen Datlow again proves herself the most masterful editor of the genre. She has mined the breadth and depth of ten years of terror, collecting superlative works of established masters and scene-stealing newcomers alike.

First published by Tachyon in 2016, ‘Nightmares’ is 422 pages between you and a good night’s sleep.

Normally, I am a big fan of Ellen Datlow’s anthologies, rarely does she put a step wrong in the way they are laid out, and the quality of the contributers speak for themselves.

However, having read quite a few modern horror anthologies (and I am thinking specifically of the Mark Morris curated ‘After Sundown’),Nightmares does not, seem to me, emblematic of a decade’s worth of ‘best horror’. If it is, then that is truly a nightmare.

Out of the 24 short stories, some were plain unreadable, due to the subject nature, and some were just head scratching-ly weird and made no sense at all. It felt as though I was ready a much longer book, as it took a lot of effort to plough through it, and honestly, my nightmare would be having to read it again.

So rather than focus on the particular ones which left a bitter taste in my mouth, here are the ones which I enjoyed.

‘Dead Sea Fruit’ by Kaaron Warren TheAshmouth Man, the creation (or is it?) of a ward full of girls with anorexia, poses interesting questions about why we don’t have more stories with new creations. It seems to be, at the moment, an endless rehashing of old tropes (such as in other stories where women are the bad guys, the murdered, the dispossessed) get a hackneyed revamp. More stories like this one that raise goosebumps down the spine please!

‘Closet Dreams’ by Lisa Tuttle is a devastating kidnap horror tale which resonates because it seems so real. Here, a little girl is desperate to escape from her unnamed captor, and the ending is truly tragic and upsetting.

‘Lonegan’s Luck’ by Stephen Graham Jones One of , if not the favourite authors of mine , can turn his craft from a biting story like this, to a novella, to a full blown novel, without missing a heartbeat. This Western horror mashup, takes the snake oil salesman and outs a unique twist on what exactly he is trying to sell. Wry, dark and brutal, I loved it.

‘That Tiny Flutter Of A Heart I Used To Call Love by Robert Shearman is a dark little beast of a story which I believe, would have fitted very well into a Pan Book Of Horror. Haunted dolls will, for this reader, always be a creepy trope that I can get behind. Those ever staring eyes….

The Atlas Of Hell by Nathan Ballingrud A map of actual hell, wanted by a gangster with eyes on being able to bring objects from it. And an antiquarian book seller is on its trail as well. Things do not go as planned for either party. Nasty, brutish and short.

‘Ambitious Boys Like You’ by Richard Kadrey A heist tale, with a wicked twist. 2 criminals go to rob an old man, should have been easy, right? Except their mark lives in a weird, doll decorated house in the bayou , a house of fading grandeur, that they expect has hidden riches in it. The old man lives on his own, how hard can it? When they find out what he has been hiding, it is too late to get away.

Horror is such a subjective thing to read, what may scare you, might roll off me like water off a duck’s back , so this is merely my , some may say, ill informed opinion. These stories stand out for a reason, compared to the others they are like beacons in the dark. And I think if this does represent the future of horror, then this handful of authors have it covered in spades.

About the editor…

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited about one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year series‘The Doll Collection’, ‘Mad Hatters And March Hares’, ‘The Devil And The Deep’, ‘Echoes:The Saga Anthology Of Ghost Stories’, ‘Edited By’, and ‘Final Cuts:New Tales of Hollywood Horror And Other Spectacles’

She’s won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, and the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor. Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for “outstanding contribution to the genre,” was honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career, and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.

Links-http://www.datlow.com/

Twitter @EllenDatlow @TachyonPub